Wednesday

May 26, 2010 at 5:11 AM

A large group of gunmen, armed with rifles, grenades and bombs, killed at least 14 people, in an audacious midday robbery, according to officials and a witness.

BAGHDAD — A large group of gunmen, armed with rifles, grenades and bombs, staged an audacious midday robbery of a strip of jewelry stores within sight of police and army checkpoints in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, according to officials and a witness.

Even as a search for the robbers continued, with the entire neighborhood locked down, Iraqi commanders blamed Al Qaeda in Iraq, saying its fighters were desperate to replenish their coffers after a wave of arrests and the killing of the group’s leaders.

The robbery occurred on the main commercial thoroughfare in the Baya neighborhood — Street No. 20 — just before noon, prompting a firefight with Iraqi police officers and soldiers that the gunmen evidently won. At least four police officers were wounded, one gravely.

“When they finished robbing the stores, some of the gunmen paraded in the street,” brandishing grenade launchers and continuing to fire randomly at shops, said a witness, Ahmed Ameer.

Despite initial reports of arrests, it appeared that the robbers all escaped in the sport-utility vehicles they arrived in, even though the neighborhood is surrounded by blast walls, with only two entrances blocked by checkpoints.

The robbers struck at least seven stores that sell gold and also serve as money exchanges. At least one bomb exploded on the street.

“I have experience in crime scenes, and the way it was executed indicates that it was done by experts,” said the commander, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “Who else other than Al Qaeda?”

In a city inured to violence, the robbery was particularly brazen. The robbers — as many as 17 — broke mostly into pairs, Mr. Ameer said, and entered each shop, killing the shopkeepers and anyone else who happened to be nearby, before smashing glass cases and making off with the jewelry and cash.

The attack lasted 20 minutes. The shops themselves did not have guards, though at least some of the employees carried weapons.

The Interior Ministry said that one of the robbers was killed, but Mr. Ameer said a body lying beside a pistol with a silencer was in fact a local man, not one of the robbers, as the police said.

The neighborhood’s senior police commander was relieved of his duties, according to the military spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta.

A joint American and Iraqi raid last month killed the two leaders of the insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq. That raid followed what officials described as an intelligence bonanza that followed the capture of the group’s commander in Baghdad and dozens of others.

Iraqi and American officials have hailed the killings and arrests as a debilitating blow to the insurgency, severing its links to Al Qaeda’s international network of tactical and financial support.

The Islamic State of Iraq has since announced replacements of its top leaders and carried out several bloody attacks in recent weeks that have killed scores, especially in provincial cities outside of the heavily militarized capital. Earlier this month, General Atta publicly warned of potential robberies of banks and jewelry stores.

“The strikes of our security agencies against the leaders of the terrorist have stanched their finances and cut the leadership’s relations with their allies,” said Abdul Karim al-Thareb, the head of the security committee on Baghdad’s provincial council. “So what happened today was a hopeless and miserable reaction to try to collect some money.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.